Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Julia Hartz: How to Build, Scale, and Exit a Billion-Dollar Startup From Scratch | Entrepreneurship | E398

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

A small town ballerina with no business background, Julia Hartz had no guarantee that Eventbrite would work. What began as a bootstrapped startup she co-founded became a 20-year journey full of challenges, including a crisis like no other: COVID, wiping out the events industry almost overnight. But each challenge sharpened her leadership skills, and Julia ultimately turned  Eventbrite into the powerhouse it is today before exiting on her own terms. In this episode, Julia shares how these moments shaped her leadership and taught her how to build, scale, and evolve a meaningful business, even when it costs you everything. In this episode, Hala and Julia will discuss:  (00:00) Introduction (02:08) Julia’s Empathy-Driven Founder Mindset (04:46) Launching a Startup Without a Business Background (14:14) Co-Founding Eventbrite: Spotting the Gap in 2006 (25:23) Leading Through Crisis and Change (35:18) The Return of Live Events (44:04) Building a Company Culture That Evolves (48:24) CEO Mindset and Underrated Leadership Skills (1:04:48) Balancing Family and Entrepreneurship (1:11:02) Leadership Advice in the AI Era  Julia Hartz is the co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite, one of the world's leading platforms for live events. She co-founded Eventbrite in 2006 with her husband Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage, later becoming the sole CEO in 2016 and leading the company through its 2018 IPO. Eventbrite entered a new chapter in December 2025 when Bending Spoons announced a $500 million all-cash acquisition, which closed in March 2026, taking Eventbrite private. Sponsored By: Huel - Get over $50 in savings with the Discovery Bundle from Huel. Use my exclusive code YAP15 for 15% off at huel.com/yap15. Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Fabric - Protect your family with term life insurance from Fabric by Gerber Life. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/profiting  ZocDoc - Stop putting off those doctors’ appointments. Find and instantly book a doctor you love today at Zocdoc.com/PROFITING  Blinkist - Turn the world’s best nonfiction books into quick 15-minute reads or listens. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount at blinkist.com/profiting   Remitly - Transfer money internationally with Remitly, with no hidden fees. Use code BUSINESS to get a $100 bonus after you send $300 or more. New customers only.  Prolon - Reset and rejuvenate your body with Prolon’s five-day plant-based fasting mimicking program. Go to ProlonLife.com/PROFITING for 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program. Resources Mentioned: Julia’s Instagram: instagram.com/juliahartz Julia’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliahartz  The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker: bit.ly/PP-TAOG   Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals  Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Hewle, AT&T business, Remitly, and Prolon. Heel makes nutritionally complete meals that you can drink. Get 15% off with my code YAP15 at Hewle.com slash Yap15. AT&T Business delivers reliable business-grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive edge. Switch to AT&T business at business.ATT.com. Millions of people trust Remitly to move money globally. Use code business to get $100 bonus after you, send $300 or more with Remitly.

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14 years in the making was actually completely gone in 14 days. Wild. Julia Hartz is co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite. She helped turn a bootstrapped idea into a household brand through grit, vision, and relentless execution. I wasn't thinking that in my life I would be part of starting a couple. Certain people come together, call it fate, the universe. Those people may have complementary skill sets such that they're able to create something magical.

Changing the company was a non-negotiable. We couldn't actually keep going. I started with a core question, which was, given what we know about this business, what would we do if we could do it all over again? You said entrepreneurship is like, it's kind of in your head. What did you mean by that? A lot of people feel owners. feel ownership for a company, no matter what their title is.

I realize that now, more than ever. While it's incredibly valuable to have a founder running the company, you have to be leveling up every single day. What is like your top three pieces of advice for entrepreneurs tuning in right now who want to build a company as big as Eventbrite is? I can't stress enough the importance of... Yeah, fam, what does it take to build a company for 20 years? take it public, watch it nearly disappear overnight, and still come out calling it the honor of your life.

Few people can answer that question better than Julia Hartz, the co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite, the world's largest and most trusted events marketplace. In this episode, we unpack how Julia built Eventbrite from scratch, led it through a crisis, and came out with a deeper understanding of what it really takes to build a company that can evolve beyond you. You'll hear the hard-earned lessons on leadership. culture, resilience, reinvention, and how to make tough decisions when everything is changing fast. If this is your first time here, welcome. And make sure you follow the show and come back every week for more conversations like this.

Julia, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited for you to be here. I have been a longtime user of Eventbrite. And what you've built is just so incredible. So I'm just so excited to pick your brain and learn from you. And my first question is really about your character and like how you see yourself.

So you went from working at the ugly mug when you were 14 years old to then creating event bright, which you exited, you built into a huge company, sold billions of tickets. What's the through line from the girl who worked at the ugly mug at 14 to the woman who's sitting here today? I think the through line is hard work and an attention to what others need. And I'll tell you a quick story that was pretty impactful at the ugly mug. So the ugly mug was this craft coffee shop that opened in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California. It was sort of the first of its kind.

This guy came to town with this really fancy Italian manual espresso machine and a collection of ugly mugs. And I was the opening shift on the weekend. So 5 a.m. on a Saturday was my gig. and there was a woman who would stand outside wait for us to open, and she'd come in, she'd be the first to order her coffee, and no matter what I did to try to get her order right, she had a complaint, and she was vicious. And I remember being so frustrated and downtrodden and coming home and talking to my mom and saying, I just can't make her happy.

And my mom said, you know, maybe you should try to strike up a conversation. Maybe she's lonely, and she's looking for someone. to talk to. So I stole my parents' Sunday paper the next day and took it in and put it on the counter and waited for her. And then I picked some random story out of the Santa Cruz Sentinel and started to get her to talk. And from that point forward, she was a totally different customer. And I feel like that through line for me has always been about learning through my mom, how to use our empathetic skills to understand what people want. And then kind of like a thread. You know, weaving that through everything that I do and then just really working hard. And I think part of

what makes me me is that I have been working since I was a teenager with almost no gaps. I love that. And I can't wait to talk to you about building company culture because I know that's so important to you. And I know a lot of what you just talked about is probably ingrained in your strategy for building company culture. But before we get there, you've got four kids. You've called Eventbrite, your fifth child. My first born. And I know that you're a good. And I know that you're you just recently, you know, exited, stepped down as CEO, which must have been a huge deal. So what does Eventbrite mean to you? Well, you know, Eventbrite is 20 and that's a huge age. It's an age that many people are flying the net, flying out of the coop. And so I sort of feel like,

you know, if I were to personify Event Pride, I would say that I was one of three people that helped bring it to life. You know, when Kevin and Renault and I got together to start, you know, of Empright, we really were coming at it from such different perspectives and different points in our lives. I had just come from Hollywood where I'd been working in television development at FX and MTV. And I came to it with this notion of, you know, people getting together in real life around things that they're really, really passionate about have, it gives you an opportunity to create indelible memories. And I had been on a documentary show that we were piloting where we went around to different fandoms in the country.

And I'll never forget going to these meetups where I had no authority nor any clue what they were talking about or passionate about. But these were total strangers that were creating these unbelievable connections in real life. So I thought there was something behind that. Kevin came to it from a serial entrepreneur's perspective where, you know, he had built a business in payments and microtransactions to help immigrants send. money back to their families better, faster, cheaper than the incumbents. And so he was really excited about democratizing industry. And then our third co-founder, Renaud, our CTO, really came to it from a

place of turning passion into profit. He during, you know, his off hours is a prolific photographer. And he wanted to build a platform where people could share their skills and their passions, but also make money doing that. And so I think that for us, you know, it was, it was definitely a classic startup story where we were in a windowless phone closet in a warehouse with no money and just bootstrapping this idea. And I think we were really incredibly sure that we wanted to build something that brought people together in real life before, you know, we ever had to worry about not being together in real life. So we were prescient in that way. That's so cool. There's so much to unpack there. I can't wait to hear about your

boot, like, you know, your first two years and, like, the struggles and challenges and how it grew from there. When it comes to your company and you as an entrepreneur, you actually say that you're, you're not a lemonade stand kid. You didn't start creating businesses. Your husband, who is your co-founder, Kevin, he was, you know, the serial entrepreneur. You were working in corporate and TV. And so how did you learn entrepreneurship? And what do you have to say to the folks out there, because this is an entrepreneurship show about being able to learn the skill of being an entrepreneur. I think that the first thing is that you don't have to be born an entrepreneur. You don't have to fit the mold. I certainly didn't. I grew up in a small town. I was a ballerina.

I worked hard. But also being a performer, you learn how to take feedback and make adjustments. but I wasn't thinking that in my life I would be part of starting a company. And I just didn't know what I didn't know. I think we know so much more about entrepreneurship now 20 years later. But I think that, you know, you don't have to have started a company in college to be a successful entrepreneur by any means. I think what happens is that certain people come together, call it fate, you know, the university, and those people may have complementary skill sets such that they're able to create something magical. And for me, I'm really great at systems thinking and I'm really great at understanding what people want.

And when I bet Kevin and Saul lived vicariously through him, we met at a wedding and we're dating. So, you know, I feel like it opened my eyes to the world of tech and the world of entrepreneurship and that what drew me in was the velocity. And I'll never forget that first day, you know, opening my laptop and thinking like, what now? And I'll never forget that moment. And then understanding the immediate allure of building something from scratch. And for me, it connected the dots for me as to why I didn't love school because I love to learn by doing.

Yeah. And so getting my hands dirty and diving into something I didn't understand and figuring it all out on the fly for the last 20 years. It's not like I woke up a month ago and went, well, I've got it all figured out. I think that's the best part of being an entrepreneur. Yeah. Is not ever knowing and constantly learning. and iterating. And I mean, that's just, that's the best. Yeah, it's so exciting. It's so stimulating every day where you just are like learning something new, solving problems.

So you started your career off in TV. Right. And I'm always thinking about how skills that you gain in life, you always end up using the skills that you've acquired. And especially in today's world of AI and creator entrepreneurship being so popular, your unique skill set is just like so important. Like it makes it uniquely you. It's how you differentiate against AI, which can replicate a lot of tasks, but it can't replicate your lived experience, right? So you being in TV and being a part of like hit shows like jackass, how did that shape your skills as an entrepreneur, the opportunities you were able to see before everybody? else was able to see it. What were the ways that it kind of inspired you to start Eventbrite?

Well, I had, I think, a very lucky and fortunate career in television in the span of only, say, five years. So it was a very short span of time between the time that I graduated to the time that I started Ventbrite at 25. But I was also interning throughout my entire college time. And so, you know, roughly nine years in Hollywood, being able to see some of the absolute best content being made. My first internship was on the set of friends. Then, you know, I did a few other internships to try to figure out what I wanted to do and just to learn and what I didn't want to do. And then I found MTV and I found this department. It was one of four series development departments at MTV. There were two on the West Coast and two on the East Coast. And I was,

as an intern there when the jackass team sent in their pilot. I think that what I learned in that experience was how you can have an idea that is so groundbreaking and potent and clear. I mean, these guys were sure of what they wanted to do. The best part of working on that show were the weekly legal OSHA standards and practices conference call that we would have where I was on the creative side, but the guys would be, you know, in their space on a conference call and they would have to describe in great detail what they wanted to do. And they would, this totally dates me, but they would fax over, you know, maybe four pages, single line spaced of all of these ideas they had. And then the experts would have to go around and debate how they would actually be able to

do these things. And, you know, it wasn't lost on us that we were sort of killing the magic as it were, you know, as we were trying to recreate their ideas in a way that actually worked on cable. But that definitiveness of what they wanted to do was what I learned. Like never get in the way of a creative idea and always find ways to enable that. And then at FX, I again happened to just be, in the right place at the right time when John Landgraf was just taking over. And I think that era of television is unparalleled. And I, you know, it's a long time ago, but I remember these meetings where I'd be almost a fly on the walls, as the most junior person in the room, listening to the creative depth of this team and what they eventually brought to air was such high quality. And, you know, that doesn't just

happen. Yeah. And I think we're creating content at an unprecedented rate and volume today. But when you really think about the things that are category defining, those tend to be things that have been getting worked out and worked on for many, many years. Yeah, totally. I totally agree with that. So I know that you started Eventbray in 2006 or so. Yeah. What was the world like back then? And what gap did you see that you wanted to fill? Okay. So I always feel really old when I described this because it's hard to believe, but there was really no self-service option to sell tickets to events. You had RSVP tools like Evite and you had large, you know, dinosaur incumbent solutions that were super expensive and practically on-prem. So we were the first open platform for,

for anyone. And some of the principles that we started with, I think, really defined what Event Bright has become, which is we wanted Event Bright to be as easy to use as Gmail. So we would test our every feature on Kevin's father. And he was like our biggest Alpha Tester. We would, we wanted Event Bright to be completely self-service. And that's hard to do. with a payments transaction platform. And we move billions of dollars in micro transactions. The average ticket price is less than $50 on Eventbrite. And we're doing multiple billions of dollars a year. But we didn't want to make it so hard to sign up that, you know, you'd have this barrier. We wanted to lower all the barriers. And so we created a platform that on the back end could do a lot

of the heavy lifting and fraud detection, but also on the front end, it could be super simple. You just needed to set up your account and start selling tickets. Then we also wanted to be horizontal. We did not want to specialize in any single vertical of event, a type of event, and we also didn't want to just be in the U.S. or in, you know, a few different countries. We launched on the PayPal API, so that allowed us to be in like 180 countries from the beginning. And the final thing that, that, you know, that we did, I would say that was against the grain of, of common wisdom was we just undercut anyone else that was doing ticketing price-wise.

And we made free tickets free. So we only charged creators on the paid tickets that they were selling. And those decisions in the early days, well, sort of like somewhat inconsequential because we were such a small company and we bootstrap the company. So we sort of were just like, what happens if you put a zero in the ticket price box? There's no fee. Okay, let's just do that. It'll really annoy our competitors. Yeah. That ended up being such a huge part of the growth model of Eventbrite. So I think the, I think the moral of the story is like wherever you're starting, now in five years, it'll feel like 20 years ago. But you'll look back and go, oh my gosh, that was so provincial. But also,

the decisions you're making now, if they're strong and principled, they will be the backbone of your company and of your culture, really. And so we were kind of the only game in town. And we started to really see growth and traction in bloggers and tech bloggers in particular who were using Eventbrite for paid beatups. And then I'll never forget the day we'd built this really kind of, you know, primitive map to show where the tickets were being sold on Eventbrite. It was a digital map, but it would, it was on a screen in our tiny little office, and it would show the logo of the event and where the ticket purchase was being made from. And I'll never forget when New York started to light up. And that was the first time that we

were sort of getting out of the Bay Area in our little bubble. And it was for speed dating events. Oh. And I remember thinking like, oh, wow, that's a totally different genre. raw in tech meetups. There's probably a joke in there somewhere. But like, wow. And, you know, we were sort of off to the races at that point. So we bootstrapped until, and we had friends and family support, but we bootstrapped until we really had product market fit. And then, and then we raised at that point. Yeah, fam, I'm all about doing health resets. I'm on a health kick this year. I tried juice cleanses, cutting sugar completely, even intermittent fasting. But they didn't stick for me because they were just too hard to follow too strict.

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buy tickets on your platform. You had this. guiding principle to democratize events. And so that's why you decided on the zero fee also, right? So it was that like core value that actually helped really spread event right by word of mouth. Like I remember hearing about it probably like 2010. I was having events on event right. I had a little blog. Wow, that's so cool.

And I was using it and like everybody knew about it. And it was like this cool platform like you said that it was just like free. so there was no barriers. It was easy to just get hooked on it. And then you became like the household name of community event ticketing. And it was because you put it community first, not monetization first. Right. So talk to us about the importance of finding product market fits.

Yeah. And when you decided like, okay, this is really sticking and working. And then also like some of the thought behind like how to keep lowering those barriers to entries so that more people use it and spread it. You know, I think I think there's a lot of virtue in, if you can, you know, being capital efficient. I think we're entering a period of time where that actually will be put to the test in a major way because while we're gaining massive efficiency and scale in creating new ideas,

the cost to do it is so high, right, with GPU. And that will come down over time. but the compute is really a barrier. We didn't have a lot of barrier. The only barrier we had was could we put food on our table? And thankfully, we figured out how to, you know, make due. But it allowed us to not be kind of distracted by maybe other people's agendas. And, you know, and then when we did raise our first round of institutional funding,

it was from Sequoia Capital, Rollout Boat, though, was our earliest investor and board member for 14 years. And, you know, we were really sure of the people we chose to be on this journey with us, on the board, investing in the company that they were value at and not valued, you know, extracting in terms of their agendas or their ideas. And that's totally possible. I mean, I think that, you know, oftentimes you hear the kind of age-old story of a board not being fully aligned behind the entrepreneur and they all have their own agendas and especially

if things go well. It's like, you know, everybody's got an agenda. And I just think I don't think that has to be the case. I think if you really are thoughtful about the people that you, that you bring into the fold and ask to put on your team's jersey, like you can, you can really, really get far and stay true to your principles. But I think that that, you know, the way that we built Eventbrite was, this kind of perfect blend of who we were as founders. And I'm really proud of that because I think, you know, right around 2010, we were ready to go from a team, like a two pizza team, to a, you know, full-fledged company. And I remember the 2006 vintage companies had all gone through, either they hadn't made it or they'd all gone through hypergrowth challenges. And I remember thinking,

wow, this seems inevitable that we're going to lose our culture, something's going to go wrong, we're going to scale too quickly, and the wheels are going to kind of come off the bus. And I remember thinking, well, I feel for this company, as I feel for my own human child, we had a two-year-old at that point. And I thought, there's this like unconditional love that I have. So I think what I'm going to do is die trying to make a great company alongside a successful business. And I think that commitment was really supported by Kevin and Renault. And I think it made a huge difference and helped Event Bright become what it is today. And, you know, obviously it tickles me peeing to hear you say it's a household name.

Yeah. But I think it's like that didn't come easily and it didn't come from a way of we were sitting in a room going, how to be scale. It was like very human. Yeah. So let's stick deep on the company culture part because you've won like so many. awards of having such a great company to work at. Talk to us about leading up to COVID, what your company culture was like, what were some of the values that you were instilling. I know that you weren't the CEO, I believe, at that point, or right before COVID,

you became CEO. Yeah. So, and you were really leading the culture and the people. So talk to us about what were your strategy with that. Yeah, well, a few things. I mean, you know, we, so Kevin was CEO for the first 10 years and then I was CEO for the second 10 years. I'm really proud of the fact that we're still married. That's not an easy feat. And we loved working together the first 10 years. It was phenomenal because we, again, are really complimentary in our skill sets. So we just divided and conquered. He was like product and you were more people. Yeah, I was marketing and customer service. He was product. And then as we scaled, I became more, I guess, culture. And I don't know. My title was incredibly nebulous. It was present.

which I was sort of confused by, but I would have been intern if I could, if I could have done that. First, when I took over, it was like about a thousand times harder than I expected. You know, he had made it look so easy. And I, to this day, I'm not over the fact that, you know, he just didn't, didn't really tip his hand on how how challenging it is to be a CEO and how mental it is. Like the most, the biggest challenge is yourself in your own head. He did it with such ease. And then the second thing was, you know, thought of our culture as sort of like building

Legos, you know, it's, it's, you're like laying, if you lay the right foundation, you can build a lot of different things on top of it. But sometimes you like build a tower that's way too high. Like falls over. And it's really about sort of the other supporting Lego structures that you can actually have a culture that's sustainable. but also can go through hard times. And so right when I took over as CEO,

when I stepped in in 2016, it was like the good times were rolling. We were, you know, a private company, eyeing an IPO, about to acquire our largest competitor in music. Somebody had written an article about our company that said we were like the Disneyland of startups when you walked into our office. Like everything,

I just, I definitely understand the art of energy and gathering and, you know, and man, like the minute I maybe perhaps felt like, I don't think I ever felt like we had it made. I think I'm always healthily paranoid. But I mean, that was like a very fleeting moment because we acquired this big competitor that was like oil and water culture wise. I was completely naive and thinking that, you know, oh, we can just come together. it'll be kumbaya. Not. That was not the case.

It was incredibly difficult. And then we prepared to go public. We went public. And then we were like a new public company, stumbling in the public markets, you know, trying to do a lot of things. And I kind of, I came into 2019 and then transitioning into 2020, feeling like we were spinning five plates with the right hand

and like patting our stomachs with the left. and it was just, and like standing on one lake. And it was a lot. And we needed to simplify and we needed to focus. And so 2020 was our focus year. It was just like, we know what we need to do. We know how to get there. Let's stop doing all this other really cool, bright, shiny object stuff

because we've really got to get back to basics. And then March 4th of 2020 happened. And it was just, yeah. So it felt like, you know, I think what people like maybe don't know is like we weren't in great shape going into COVID. We were like going, we had gone through a really tough year. Yeah. And we were, we were stronger and leaner and fitter, so to speak, going into 2020, which

actually helped us tremendously when we had to completely reset and reimagine the company. What was going through your mind and what were some of the things that were happening once events stopped? And what did that mean for? for how you had to like think about your company, restructure your company, rethink company culture. And also I know that you got a lot of scrutiny online for the layoffs and things.

So talk to us about that. Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly I have a lot of empathy for people who live in the future, whose job it is to be futurists, especially when people are unwilling to believe them because that's only happened to me once. And, you know, we had the benefit of having, having been close to the head of the infectious disease department at UCSF, Joe DeRisi, who's a phenomenal scientist and public health expert,

having people around us who maybe are on the slightly more paranoid side weren't sure exactly what was going to happen but knew how we needed to handle it if it were the worst that we could possibly imagine and it was the worst that we could possibly imagine. And I have to say Kevin was there for me the whole time. He dropped everything he was working on and he has a sense of urgency and decisiveness that is second to nut. So what I was thinking was this is going to be really bad, and we need to move very quickly for a number of different reasons,

but not least of which to be able to help our creators rebuild their businesses. Yeah. Now, there was a moment of time about two months where our customers did not understand what we saw. and that was really hard because we had to make changes pretty immediately to help them save their businesses. And they didn't even, it's not that they didn't have the intelligence, but they just didn't have the information that we had. There was like asymmetrical information and willingness to believe.

Like they thought events were going to continue or this was temporary or something like that. Everybody thought that, right? And it's not that we had like, you know, security level information. We just were listening to the worst-case scenario and had wise people around us telling us there's no like downside to believing the worst-case scenario, especially when you're facing something that could be so, so crushing.

I mean, the whole basis of our business went away. Like, 14 years in the making was actually completely gone in 14 days. Wild. We were processing more refunds than revenue. revenue. Our tablo dashboards broke because our revenue was negative. And we hadn't accounted for that in the configuration. And again, we had to be the bearer of bad news in such a critical time when everyone was so scared and confused anyways. Like, never underestimate the

human's ability to be optimistic, you know, and cling to hope. And in that point, yeah, we had to kind of be like, no, this is going to be bad. need to not pay your vendors or your venue right now. You need to think about how you're going to refund your fans. You know, changing the company was a non-negotiable. We couldn't, we couldn't actually keep going. Yeah. The way that we were. And I wanted our actions as it came to company to be really intentional and thoughtful. And I wanted us, I knew that we would have to change the size of the company during a really scary time. And so I started with a core question, which was, given what we know about this business, what would we do if we could do it all over again?

And I asked my team that. And the executive team at the time was a mix of tenured people who'd been there from the beginning, who had just arrived, who had perspective from different companies. And we wrote down a one-pager that basically described what we would do if we could do it all over again. And the punchline was, we get to do it all over again if we make the right decisions here. So let's go do this. And we built the company to that model. And, you know, a lot of it was getting back to the basics. A lot of it was getting back to the core principles of the company. And this is entail as old as time. You scale, you let ambition take you into new areas. You get more complicated. You start, you know, bolting things on. We had a lot of cleanup to do.

And so that's what we really focused on. But first, we had to throw away our product roadmap and just help our customers and help our creators figure out a pathway forward, which included online events, which included, you know, offering credits to their customers alongside refunds, which included how do you create community branding and togetherness in a time when everybody has to be a part? And that really took us through, you know, much of 2020. Yeah. And, you know, COVID lasted a pretty long time. I remember, really, I started my business in 2020. It's really funny to think how 2020 was so detrimental to some businesses, but then gave so much opportunity to other businesses.

Like for me, I had my podcast for a couple years. And then I quit my job and started my social media podcast agency at a time where everybody wanted social and podcast. So it was like a million dollars, like right away in revenue, like before we even hit a year with my agency. Like, it just took off. And I was doing a ton of online events at that time. Like, Clubhouse was really popular.

And just, like, all these sort of, like, webinar type events. And I'm sure Eventbrite was supporting creators doing that. But now, fast forward, 26, everyone is, like, clamoring for these, like, in-person events. And it's becoming more of a trend than ever. even though there's so much opportunity online for creator entrepreneurs and making money online, there's also a lot of opportunity right now for live events. And I'd love to learn from you, what are some of the trends that you're seeing in the live event space? And why is it something that people who have a lot of followers, creator entrepreneurs, something that they should really think about?

Well, I mean, I would start from like kind of a heady place, which is, you know, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you have the physiological need, so food, water, air. You have a need for security and shelter. And right above that, you have a need for connectedness. And the reason why I bring that up is not because it looks good on a strategy deck. It's really because in the span of 20 years, we have seen several technological advances and revolutions and pivot points that, you know, for all intents and purposes could have driven us farther away from being together in real life. And through all of those, whether it's social media, mobile phones and how much content, you know, we're watching and and scrolling through virtual reality, global pandemic.

Now, AI, it's all of these things have been enablers of bringing us together and also have driven, up the premium value of live experiences. People want to, or can now find their people and find their niche online. It's incredibly accessible to find your people now, but it drives this desire to want to then meet them in the flesh. And it, I think there's a combination of a few things going on. One is the old adage of you don't know what you got till it's gone. Yeah. And I would say for rich countries, the taking away of liberties and being able to be together momentarily or that stress that got put into the system of being together made people realize how important it is to be in real life. And I also think, you know, I think about the story.

that happened on Eventbrite, which was an incredible creator, Rada Agarwal, started a company called Daybreaker. Prior to COVID, they were doing early morning raves where, you know, total, like, epic events where it's like 5 a.m. and it's sunset on the, or sunnise. And just like coffee and stuff. Yeah, like coffee, kombucha, but just like total parties. And they were doing like a thousand people in multiple cities. COVID hits. And they, and they set up a studio kind of like this, you know, in New York, which is like a total nightmare. And they start live streaming these Sunday morning dance parties. And within a few months, this had grown to a global party of over 100,000 people a week.

Wow. Of all ages. You know, people who just wanted to feel that connection and that magic. were like stuck at home with their kids. And it became this ritual. And they became a totally different company out of COVID. So to your point, they built a multimedia platform and their business became massive.

And I think that that idea of, you know, accessibility and bringing these otherwise pretty exclusive events, you had to live in like a cool city and kind of be in the know to the masses, open an opportunity and open people's eyes to what could happen in the future. Yeah. And now I think, you know, we have this almost like renaissance coming out of this pandemic. We've seen this before.

So big, big massive pandemic and then this renaissance period of creativity and connection that I think is going to breed a whole new generation of live experiences that kind of cross the transom of, you know, I'm a passive participant to I'm in the middle of this storyline. Yeah. And that's, I think, what people are looking for. and we see it time and time again, continue to reinvent itself and grow in strength. Yeah. So for somebody who's really interested, like you mentioned, there's this huge opportunity

in creating experiences and actually not just like talking to people at an event, actually bringing them in so they're like actually participating. What are some of the coolest events that you've seen or opportunities for entrepreneurs when it comes to throwing these new types of experiences? Well, I think the authority on this, in my opinion, is a woman. name Priya Parker. She wrote the art of gathering. And she is, you know, I think one of the foremost experts on sort of social dynamics and how to create a memorable connection. And she's done this through, you know, conflict resolution, but she actually like applies it to sort of any, any genre. And so I highly recommend checking out her work. I got to interview her. She sounds interesting.

She's incredible. And she talks about generous authority. of hosting and just the job of a host and how important that is. And I think so often we get to about 10 or 20 percent of what that role actually is. And I think the coolest events that I have found on the platform and otherwise have been experiences where the host, the creator, is thinking from beginning to end about the experience of the guest or the fan or the participant. And drawing them in a way that is going to take them through the arc of story or them through the arc of learning or them through the, you know, magic of connection. And they have that idea in their head through the eyes of their customer from beginning, especially to end. And I love,

I love Priya so much because she like kind of harps on this thing that I'm not great at, which is a great ending. Like I know how to begin a talk, a speech, an event, a party, a dinner, I know exactly how I want to give that opening toast or connection. And I'm terrible. How do you tie it in a boat? Like, how do you create that magical end that everybody? Because that's the last thing that people remember. Yeah.

You know? So, I mean, there have been these, I mean, the best part about Eventbrite is that because we didn't predetermine what kind of event should use Eventbrite, every single day we were seeing incredible concepts. formats that we'd never even thought of. And in that way, we were able, we are able to be sort of micro trend forecasters of what's coming up. And I think, you know, recently, I think book talk has like given way to just these incredibly immersive events around genres like romanticcy, you know, and like how you create these like fully immersive experiences around one book series that. just sort of grows and lives on and on and on. And it's not your typical book talk. You know,

it's not going to, I love a good book talk. So, you know, and a local bookshop. But it's like more so actually bringing people into the full 360 view of an author's mind around a story that they created and how the fans of that can become a part in the story. And it's just like that, I mean, not to be cheesy, but that is a tale as old as time. That is something that people really want. Something that you just touched on was that Event Bright's product was able to sort of evolve. Oh, yeah. With COVID and going back to events and just like now it's like, you know, so many things

have changed over the last 20 years. Like it's night and day. But you also have said that company culture has to be able to evolve. Yes. And you can't like have the same company culture as day one as year 20. So I'd love to learn from you, you know, how you think about company culture. What kind of values you had in the beginning and how it had to change over time? When I think about the Eventbrite product and why it worked and why it became ubiquitous with

live experiences, I think a lot of it was that we built it to melt into the background. We wanted our creators and their events and the people who gathered around that passion to be front and center. So all of our marketing, all of our storytelling was really around that. We started to become and evolve naturally from just a platform and like you, utility into a marketplace when we realized that we could start to help creators find bigger audiences and when we realized that people were coming to Event Bright to find things to do because they realized that we had really niche content that they couldn't find on other platforms.

So that evolution of a marketplace was really going on in parallel to the evolution of the eventbrite culture. And I'll never forget when I took on. the sort of self-annointed role of like coming to the table of every major business decision, putting Brightlings, which is our cute little name, first, like their needs first, that I realize like great cultures are often just a manifestation of the people at the company at any given time. And because of that, cultures change. You know, they change through time. because people come and go. I mean, being a founder and being a CEO,

you have to be okay with people leaving you all the time. Sometimes they come back. And that was my favorite. It was a brightling boomerang. But I thought like, you know, it's not about preserving a culture. We're not like a bug stuck in ember. You know, it's about creating something

that's more like an amoeba that like can travel through time and space but sustain itself and grow stronger over. time. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is just that we, we measure certain parts of a culture to get some sort of finite metric about how we're doing. You know, most companies have something like culture amp that sends out surveys to their, to their employees, and you get these scores, and you scrutinize the scores, and, you know, you could cut the data a million different ways. Frankly, I always thought that was like a waste of time because, A, I don't think we were asking the right questions, and B, I think those,

you know, it's sort of like a snapshot. I was never afraid of getting bad scores on that because if something was hard was going on at the company, I would have expected the scores to be lower, you know? And I was also really like mindful of the fact that you can't ever have the happiest culture. That's not possible. What I was striving to do was create the most sustainable culture in that our principles would sustain themselves. We could trust each other. And that, you know, through hard times and good times, there would be connection. And I think the most common thing that was said about Eventbrite in the employee experience was that people care for one another. And that really matters,

I think, a lot. Yeah. And I have been forever in pursuit of creating a successful business where people really cared for one another and where you had, where you just, you had like three things. Best place to work, best manager, and best friend. Those were really important to me. Yeah, that's so cute. Yeah, fam, have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't? It happens to the best of us. And in business, that adds up fast. Because when somebody is ready to talk, speed can secure the deal. That's That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications.

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That's H-U-E-E-L dot com slash YAP-15. New customers only thank you to Heel for partnering and supporting our show. So I want to focus more about your like entrepreneurship journey personally. Yeah. Something that you said early, very early on in the conversation. is that like entrepreneurship is like, it's kind of in your head. What did you mean by that? Well, I think being a CEO is a mind game, first and foremost,

because a lot of people feel ownership for a company, no matter what their title is. And I realize that now, now more than ever. Having the CEO title is this construct. And actually, it's an interesting construct, because I'm starting to wonder if it will be the, be like the title that we use in the future. But being the like single point leader of any organization

just creates this sort of like headiness. And I do think, I definitely think there are people who are trying to like flan the org and, you know, get away from being, but like, ultimately there's always going to be that leader. And I never took for granted the idea that, because I was on the founding team, I would be a good CEO. I think that's actually a huge misnomer. And I think it's why some companies fail.

Because the people who were there at the beginning, who were, you know, brave enough to start the company aren't, are definitely not often the right people to run the company. Yeah. And while it's incredibly valuable to have a founder running the company, you have to be leveling up every single day. I mean, literally every, sometimes multiple times a day to be the person that's most deserving of that title. What kind of skills were like, okay, like Kevin was doing this, this and that? I've got to figure, like, was it like the financials or like, what kind of skills were you thinking like I've got to nail this down in order to be the best CEO that's going to take this company public? I wasted so much time asking myself, what would Kevin do? I mean, he was right there, but I worried that I was not doing it anywhere as good as he was.

And I really wish I could have all that time back because I just did it different, you know, and that's not better or worse. I think in some instances it was worse and in some instances it was better. Certainly, you know, table stakes are strategy, financials, ability to communicate a compelling vision. I mean, that was like, you know, well, I think whatever. everybody needs to have. I think some of the things that I learned later after COVID made me, leading through COVID made me stop asking myself what somebody else would do and start really getting behind what I knew we needed to do. I had a lot more conviction after that crisis.

And COVID wasn't the first crisis. I mean, we had a just kind of this like rolling wave of crises after COVID. I think some of the skills that are underrated and underpracticed is listening and seeking to understand. Often as a leader, you want to, you are kind of asked implicitly and explicitly to know everything. Yeah. And to always have the right answer.

And that is completely a good. garbage idea. Like, if one person had all the right answers, this would be a really boring life. You know, the whole point of working on something together is to get the best ideas, to distill an amalgamation of the best ideas, to get diverse thinkers and people around a table problem solving toward a better outcome. And so I felt at first that I had to have all the right answers. And when I became more confident, I was able to ask to, A, say, I don't have all the answers, and I want to learn from different perspectives. And it wasn't that I wanted to be told what to do. But I actually wanted to take everybody's perspective, synthesize it, and make the call.

Yeah. Right? And that's incredibly rewarding. But I think often what happens is we either just make believe that we have the right answer and we make a call. or we have recency bias and we do what the last best idea was given to us, right? We listened to the last person and go, okay, I'm going to do that. Yeah. Or, you know, we just seek to listen for bias of confirmation that we're right.

And so I think beginning to a place where you could say every day, the right answer might not live in my head. It might live somewhere else. I'm going to go find it by being, by practicing appreciative. inquiry, I think that's like the next level and that is an evolved part of being an evolved leader. And then another part of it is, you know, being able to be corrected and change your mind and be okay with that and let like let people in on that without it becoming this sort of, you know, destabilizing moment. Yeah. And I think the things that I wish I would have done better, I wish I would have taken more risks.

I definitely think coming through COVID was such a harrowing journey and definitely took us holding hands and making a couple really hard moves and leaps that after that I became a little bit more protective of the company. And I feel like I could have taken more risks. And another thing I could have done is been a bit tougher. And I don't know if other people would agree with me on that. But I feel like I have always been really in tune with what people are going through and what they're feeling.

And that empathy can be ruinous sometimes because I can get really kind of, I can revert to the mean of what I think a group of people are capable of. And that's often undershooting the goal. So like you were putting the people first, not the company first. Yeah. Yeah. I do that sometimes too. because it's like you just care so much about the people.

But ultimately, the company should be the first priority. But there's probably some benefit in doing that as well because there's loyalty involved. Well, I think I learned this incredible lesson in the last hour of leading event, right, so to speak, which was the last two years or so I had been really sure of where we needed to be. And I had been almost like this white knuckle grip on the reins. And when we announced that we were selling the company, I really had this moment. I didn't know what I was doing because I had never done that before. So I was totally in new territory.

And I got this sense that everybody was just like immediately disconnected and detached. I remember like going on to a Zoom and it was like dead face everywhere. And I'm like, uh-oh, you know, how are we going to offer? operate over the next few months as we moved to, you know, we needed to go as a public company. You have to go through regulatory compliance and approval. And so I thought like, oh gosh, I got really, really, really low for like a night. So like your team was upset because they're like, what does this mean for my job? No, they weren't upset.

I mean, my team is our consummate professionals and they had, you know, known that we were going to be going private. and they were really amazing. But I could just tell they were sort of they needed a beat a little bit longer than I needed. And I was ready to get back to work and kind of like plow through this period of uncertainty. And I remember just feeling really down and dejected like, oh, no, this is going to be a terrible few months.

Like, what have I done? And so I came back to them the next day. And I was like, you know, I think this is how we should operate. over the next few months. Do the right thing for the customer, always. Do the right thing for each other, always. Take care of one another and have fun. And kind of like, Yolo, like, we're not going to be together for that much longer

because we knew the structure of the deal and what would happen post-close. Oh, my God. Like, from that point forward, I've released the white-knuckle grip. And as it were, I think somebody said, you know, it's like having a good hair day before you go to get a haircut. Every day something was going better than it was before up into the right. And it wasn't, it wasn't, at first I thought like, oh, it's just people feeling kind of bittersweet about this and adjusting to it. No, it definitively giving people those like pretty loose, you know. Yeah, the handcuffs were up.

Guard rails and being like, just go do your best. It was like actually better for the company. And that was my last lesson. That's a pretty big one. So 20 years of lessons. Yeah. You ended up exiting the company. I'd love to understand what it feels like.

Because for me, like I've been running my company for like six, seven years. And it's so ingrained in like who I am. It's so attached to my identity. You founded your company as well. What does it feel like? like to exit a company. Like, did you have any grief? Or is it more like, or do you feel like relief?

Like, what do you feel? It's hard to tell. I mean, I can only equate it to being postpartum in terms of any other like life experience that feels familiar where there's like a world of possibility in this new shiny thing of the future that you, you know, that you're excited about. you also don't know what which end is up and you're like totally confused about how time moves. I feel like, you know, for 20 years, I've had this singular focus. I really am not the type of person to have many different types of pursuits.

I was like the monorail, you know, in our family. It was like a Vemprite and my family and my friends. Yeah. So yeah, I definitely think that there's grief. I pre-grieved, which. was like probably my way of, of, you know, handling this. And I'm sure, I'm sure I need to go through this kind of hard moment of not immediately jumping into the next thing. And that was, you know, that was something that I knew in my gut and had been told about, I don't know, a million times

from people once the news was probably like, like, don't jump into something right away. And just taking the time to reflect. And then, you know, I think I, I, I really just want to help people. And I know that I want to personally go back and learn from square one. Like that's so important to me. And so, you know, I don't know exactly what that is, but I'm being being very, very intentional about how I build the next 20 years, which is kind of cool.

Sort of like these, you know, these eras. Yeah, it's like a new chapter that you get to figure it out and with so much more freedom. I never felt like I didn't have freedom as the thing. Like, I always felt like how lucky am I to work on the thing that I feel most passionate about that I was able to help build? That I was there when it was born and I was there when it flew the coop. And how lucky am I? I never, ever felt burdened or obstructed. or held back from being the leader of a Vemprite.

I felt like what an honor and a privilege. So, you know, like that, that to me, yes, I went through, who am I going to be without it? This is my whole identity. Am I going to, am I going to be irrelevant? Am I going to, you know, fall into a deep, dark depression? I would say it's been about a month and I feel like there's a lot of opportunity. A lot has come my way, which I feel really, really grateful for. but I know that I need to take my time and go slow.

And I have this, like, I don't know, I have this passion around this idea of like, in television you reset to one, right? When you're shooting a scene, you go back to the beginning, you do it again. I have just like obsession with that concept. I don't know what format it'll take, but I do know that as I start to spend time with other people,

you know, incredible content creators like yourself. and, you know, I'm lucky enough to be advising Sammy Cohen and people like her where I just feel like I now have the time to learn more and to support. But I also just have this insatiable appetite of learning. And rather than go off and be the sort of wise sage that, you know, knows everything. I want to do the opposite. You want to go back to starting something from scratch. I want to reset to one. I don't know what that means, but we'll see.

That's so exciting. Yeah. Another question that I have for you that I'm very curious about because something that I want to, I don't have kids yet. And so I really want to have kids soon. And I've been going through this like internal struggle of like, could I really be a CEO? Like I'm running a pot.

I feel like I have three jobs. I have two companies, a podcast. Could I really tack on a kid onto this? And my partner is also an entrepreneur and like he's not slowing down. and he's actually a little younger than me. Yeah. So how did you balance it all? You're one of the only really successful female entrepreneurs.

Like there's not that many, like there are. There's more now, thankfully. There are more now, but I would say like nine out of ten successful entrepreneurs on the show or even, you know, more than that are men. Yeah. I mean, when we took a Vembrite public in 2018, I was the 21st woman to found and lead the company into an IPO as CEO ever. That was like really sad to me.

Yeah. I was like really bittersweet to hear. I was like less stoked about that and we're like pretty bummed out. And I was the second youngest ever. And I wasn't not that young. So I, you know, I do reflect a lot about on how how, how, I have made it happen. And I think it's a confluence of factors

that's incredibly personal. But the thing that I see happening more often now than I experienced because I was pretty young when I had my first, I was 28, so pretty young by that, by like modern times, is that I didn't really overthink it. And I think now, like, with science being where it is,

thankfully, we have options to like, put off having kids for longer and later. And I think that's great. But it also kind of makes you overthink it. And what I like to tell people, and I've had this conversation with so many, so many women and men at Eventbrite, one of my favorite parts of building a company

is being able to be in people's lives. We have, you know, I think over two dozen babies that were born to people who met at Eventbrite. So I take that metric very seriously. But I always would say, you got yourself here somehow. There were things that you were born with.

There were things that you learned. There were challenges that you overcame. There were things, opportunities that you took. You are going to get to that next level, which, you know, in your cases building a business and building a family with the exact same tactics.

And like it doesn't, it doesn't, it's certainly life-defined. for sure, but it also, I used, for me personally, I thought of it as, hey, kid, you're getting on my train and like, you get on the train and we're going. I'm not stopping the train to then divert a different way. And I was so passionate about that and am so passionate about that with women in the workplace of let's go through all the ways in which you personally have gotten here because those are the things that you know, you know, and maybe take it for granted. And that's apply it to the future. And like, that's how you're going to do it. Yeah. And we became very specific

and precise about our support of people building their families while working at Eventbrite to ensure that women had the highest degree of success possible in coming back and building their careers. And that to me was really important work that we did. You know, we didn't, yes, we won a wards and whatnot. But I mean, we really didn't do it for that. We did it because it was the right thing to do. And because Kevin and I had gone through the process of having a child and having a family and building a company, we had that empathy. And so I think that's going to be a really important part of the next era for you is really having confidence in your ability to figure it out. Because it's different for everybody. And it's not easy, but it's certainly not impossible.

Yeah. And I think that the final thing I'll say because I have older kids now. I've I've older kids and younger kids. I have two cohorts of ages. And I can say without a doubt, it definitely takes a different level of engagement and parenting in different chapters of the child's life. And so you can, it's not just one mode. Yeah. You know?

And I think that's like maybe something that people don't talk about. that, you know, there are times when you can really lean in and to one side or the other for, and I would say I used to always get told this and I never believed it until I experienced it. Bigger kids, bigger problems. And so, you know, it's like as they get older, it definitely takes a lot more cognitively to guide a young adult through the world than, you know, a small child. Incredible advice. Thank you so much.

That's incredible advice. If you had to start all over, would you still go into business with your partner? Oh, a thousand times. I mean, we really the last 10 years have been the most challenging for us because we haven't been working side by side. So while we both have, you know, this shared passion and unconditional love for Eventbrite, we weren't sitting. We sat side by side for the first 10 years.

Yeah. It's so much to talk about. Yeah. I mean, it just, it's amazing. So I would say do it if you can. I mean, it's such a reward. experience to be able to build something together and to have that shared experience and context and passion. And, you know, I would say like if I had to place a bet, we likely are

going to do something together again because we really enjoyed that bonding, right? Yeah, and a way of being side by side in something that's not just the kids or not just, you know, our personal lives, but something that you're building that's, that's incredibly valuable. You exited Eventbrite and AI is taking over. It's going to be bigger than electricity than the Internet. It's like the biggest technology shift that we've ever seen. What's your advice to the new leaders of Eventbrite as they, you know, approach this AI era? Well, part of why we chose Bending Spoons who acquired Eventbrite is because they have a track record.

of applying, you know, cutting edge technology to consumer businesses to drive a better result for the customer. I think that they are misunderstood in the U.S. I think they're going to be an enormously successful company, and I feel really strongly about the stewardship of them to have MMPRite because of how they think, how they've run the company

and ultimately the kind of people they are. Because at the end of the day, you know, when it comes down to it, are they making the right decisions for people? They're constantly thinking about how to better the experience of the customer and how to put the customer in a better spot all the time. So that was really, like, important to me as I was thinking through this, the set of options that we have. also a company like Eventbrite is basically in a very, very crowded space of companies that either have to completely disrupt themselves or they will be gone. And I wanted Eventbrite to be around longer than us. And I think that in order to drive longevity, you have to be really sure about, again, this

blank slate exercise, because this is a re-imagination moment. for most companies, almost all Web 2.0 companies are absolutely facing this existential opportunity. And so I think one of the things just that I think is really important that may seem kind of silly is just, I think the people who are leading companies need to be playing with AI every single day, it as almost like as hobbyists. And I just think that that is something that gets missed because people are either too busy doing their day job or they're reading about it. as passive participants, but they're not like setting up their open claw. They're not, you know, using it in all these different ways, even if it's just in their personal life.

I think just getting to be more fluent faster is really important. And the final thing I'll say is that I do think that there's a rate of change that, that outpaces human's ability. And I think we have to be prepared to go back to the basics, you know, of human emotion, of human desire, of that Maslow's hierarchy of needs to, come together and work together through this massive dislocation, change, and big uncertainty. You were just saying that you want Eventbrite to live on beyond you and your husband. Why? Why is that? Why is that so important to you? Because I think the legacy of what Eventbrite brings to the world is really

important. Eventbrite's the largest platform of live experiences in the world. We are the second largest trafficked events site in the world. We are a place where niche is mass, where people can find their identity, they can find their people, they can connect, and they can create indelible memories. So I know that may sound heady, but if not Eventbrite, then who? And Eventbrite, I know, is a place where everyone is included. And there's a way for, you know, the new stewards of Eventbrite, to create something that is a magnitude of, you know, order of magnitude larger than what we created. I'm so excited to see that because the world needs in-person live experiences now more than ever. Yeah.

Okay. Last question. Before I go on to like the couple questions I end my show with, what is like your top one, three pieces of advice for entrepreneurs tuning in right now who want to build a company as big as? Eventbrite is. I can't stress enough the importance of capital efficiency. I think that like the, it gives you freedom. It gives you options. It gives you power.

You know, it is, it's really important. And I actually was just listening to one of my business heroes, Anna Boutin, who's the head of Santander, the largest bank in Europe. And I mean, she wakes up every day thinking. about that. And they're incredibly valuable company with over 180 million customers. And, you know, she's obsessed with how to how to drive efficiency and make more money. And I think, you know, it's sometimes alluring to raise the big round and alluring to get the nice office and alluring to say that you've raised, you know, but it's, that is allowing smoke and mirrors if you don't

have a very, very strong way to return on your invested capital. One of the last questions that I ask all my guests is something actionable that we can do today. So what is one actionable thing that our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? I would say to take the exercise of a blank slate. If you're working on something or you're about to launch something, take a blank sheet a paper, physical paper out, and draw the diagram of what would be a better version of that and constantly be thinking about how you can iterate even your best idea. Because right now, every six hours, things are changing. So I mean, you know, it's quite literally your idea yesterday can be made better today. And I think just being willing to constantly iterate even your best ideas and ask yourself, what would I do if I could do it all over again will yield a better, probably bigger risk-taking approach. And I wish I would have done that even more often.

Julia, this was such an awesome interview. I feel like I learned so much and I feel so inspired. Thank you. My last question to you is, what is your secret to profiting in life? Wow. I think it is being, this sounds so cliche, but I really think it's about like genuine gratitude, not forced gratitude, but genuine gratitude and grounding in the thing that you know you are incredibly grateful for. And I think that's just different for everybody. And I think oftentimes people get confused or overly convoluted about what they should be grateful for. I think just having that simple knowledge, that knowingness of what you're grateful for and reminding yourself of that constantly is a really great way to see opportunity, to seek connection, to build resilience,

and to find joy. And where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, I'm on Instagram, Julia Hearts, at Julia Hearts, and then I'm also on LinkedIn. I see. You've got a pretty big following on LinkedIn. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Julia.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Well, there you have it, yeah, fam. Julia Hart's is the real deal. What stayed with me from this conversation is how much of Julia's success came down to the decisions that looked small in the moment.

Bootstrapping longer than it felt comfortable, choosing investors based on values, not valuation, building a product designed to disappear into the background so creators could shine. None of these feel like headline moves, but every single one of these moves became load-bearing for everything that came after. Julia's blank sheet exercise

is something I want you to try this week. right at the top of a page, what would I do if I could start over? Then answer it honestly about your business, career, or next move. Then act on one change immediately. And on capital efficiency. Julia was direct. Freedom, options, and power all flow from how disciplined you are with your resources. So take an honest look this week at your time and where your money is going in your business.

Cut what's not earning its place and double down on what's actually moving things forward. Yeah, bam, I hope this episode. episode pushes you to build with more heart, lead with more conviction, and stop waiting for perfect conditions. The entrepreneurs who win are the ones that keep learning, keep adopting, and keep going. If you listen, learned, and profited from this episode, share it with somebody in your world who needs to hear it. Leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify video, and connect with me on Instagram at Yapp with Hala and LinkedIn by searching Hala Taha. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast

Princess, signing off.